Woody and Mia: A New York Story

By Eric Lax; Eric Lax is the author of "Woody Allen: A Biography," from which this article is adapted. The book will be published in May by Alfred A. Knopf.

Published: February 24, 1991

Correction Appended

"It's no accomplishment to have or raise kids," Woody Allen often used to say. "Any fool can do it."

Then in the fall of 1979 he met Mia Farrow, who had seven children. Mia, he now says, "introduced me to a whole other world. Yet the two of us have so little in common that it always amazes us. We're always marveling on why we threw in our lot together and stayed together as long as we have.

"I could go on about our differences forever: She doesn't like the city and I adore it. She loves the country and I don't like it. She doesn't like sports at all and I love sports. She loves to eat in, early -- 5:30, 6 -- and I love to eat out, late. She likes simple, unpretentious restaurants; I like fancy places. She can't sleep with an air-conditioner on; I can only sleep with an air-conditioner on. She loves pets and animals; I hate pets and animals. She likes to spend tons of time with kids; I like to spend my time with work and only a limited time with kids. She would love to take a boat down the Amazon or go up to Mount Kilimanjaro; I never want to go near those places. She has an optimistic, yea-saying feeling toward life itself, and I have a totally pessimistic, negative feeling. She likes the West Side of New York; I like the East Side of New York. She has raised nine children now with no trauma and has never owned a thermometer. I take my temperature every two hours in the course of the day."

Allen is constantly amazed at Farrow's ability to do such things as run a tractor and paint houses when he can't handle the simplest mechanical chores. (When he was writing comedy routines for television in the 1950's, he invited another writer to dinner every three or four months, not because they were such good friends but because Allen couldn't change a typewriter ribbon and the man could. "After the meal I'd say, 'Oh, by the way, can you change this?' I could never do any of that stuff.")

"I can only think that what made us throw in our lot together," he says, "is that the two of us met slightly later in life and that we both have our own developed lives."

When they met, he was 43 years old and a critical and commercial success. His 1977 film, "Annie Hall," had won him Oscar nominations for best director, best actor and best original screenplay, a triple play managed only once before, by Orson Welles for "Citizen Kane." Allen won all but best actor.

She, 34 and divorced for nearly a year, was working on Broadway in "Romantic Comedy." (During her marriages, first to Frank Sinatra and then to Andre Previn, the composer and conductor, she was encouraged not to work.) One evening, Michael Caine and his wife came to a performance and afterward the three went to Elaine's for dinner. Allen was there at his usual table; Caine stopped to say hello and introduced Farrow.

SHE HAD ACTUALLY MET ALLEN IN PASSING at a party in California several years earlier and they once corresponded, she to tell him that she enjoyed "Manhattan" and he politely to thank her. She had never seen him as a stand-up comedian, which he was in the early 1960's, but she knew of him as a director, having also seen "Annie Hall." Then in April 1979, she noticed a picture of Allen on the cover of this magazine. He had on a scruffy sweater and was holding an open umbrella over one shoulder. She found the picture appealing and read the profile inside, concluding that he was "neat." She tore off the cover and stuck it in her Random House Dictionary. (About seven years later -- by then she and Allen had been together for about six years -- she came upon the picture and had it framed. "I'm not in the habit of saving pictures like that, but I was a little lonely at the time and he had such an interesting face. It was a long winter," she adds, shrugging.)

Some weeks after their encounter at Elaine's, Allen sent her an invitation to his New Year's Eve party ("I think practically everybody in New York got one," she says). She went with Tony Perkins, who was in the show with her, and his wife. Allen pays attention to the smallest details of the few big parties he gives -- he stewed over the paper stock of the Cartier invitations for this one. But he is an almost invisible host. He likes to fill a grand place like the Harkness House, a mansion turned for a time into a ballet school, with hundreds of guests but he doesn't like to work the room. He greets everyone as they arrive. "If it's me meeting people at the door, I have no entry phobia. The burden is on them." Then once the throng is assembled, he more or less fades into the woodwork.

Farrow had a good time at the party but only a few words with Allen. Afterward, she sent him a note of thanks and a copy of Lewis Thomas's book of essays "The Medusa and the Snail." Allen had his secretary, Norma Lee Clark, call her ("Gracious person that I am," he says) to thank her and suggest that they have lunch sometime. In the spring of 1980, he invited Farrow, again through his secretary, to lunch at Lutece. (Farrow later made a needlepoint sampler of the date and event -- April 17, 1980 -- that hangs on the wall outside his bedroom.) More dinner invitations followed, always through Allen's secretary. During the first several months of this routine, Allen never phoned Farrow. He prefers not to speak on the phone to anyone unless he has to, and being invited through an intermediary didn't bother her. "She never mentioned it," Allen says.

It was a slow courtship. "We would have dinner," Farrow says, "and we're still having dinner."

Correction: March 3, 1991, Sunday, Late Edition - Final A picture caption in The Times Magazine last Sunday with an article about Woody Allen and Mia Farrow included erroneous identifications supplied by the Photoreporters agency for the child shown with Mr. Allen and for the date and place. The picture, on page 30 at the top center, showed him holding his daughter, Dylan Farrow, on the set of the 1987 film "Radio Days."